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Omega Circuits and Engineering
Andrew Sheldon//August 9, 2005//
Date: July 29, 1992
Title: Top 20/ Omega Circuits and Engineering
In 1981, James Genes and his son Jim worked around the clock to open the new facility of Omega Circuits and Engineering. After years of trading in printed circuit boards for other companies, Genes had started his company six months earlier, and begun making the product himself in his basement. He was now getting ready for the next stage: his first manufacturing plant. Genes leased a small unit in Edison, installed used equipment and gave the walls a coat of fresh paint. But the day before the company moved in, the place went up in flames.
Jim remembers he had gone to buy supplies, and returned to find smoke billowing from the doors and windows, and the building surrounded by fire engines. “I tried to run inside, but the firemen held me back,” he says. Adds James: “I thought it was the end. I told Jim, we should have continued as circuit board brokers instead of trying to get into manufacturing.” The fire, caused by a power cable being incorrectly hooked to a heater, destroyed most of the equipment. The father and son spent the next three weeks trying to clear the rubble, and finally, with much trepidation, decided to open the business anyway.
Now, 11 years later, that persistance has paid off. Omega Circuits and Engineering has become one of Central New Jersey”s leading printed circuit board producers. Annual sales doubled between 1989 and 1991 to $2 million, and the company in March 1985 moved from Edison to its own 16,000 sq. ft. manufacturing building in New Brunswick. The company”s circuit boards are used in electronic operations as diverse as computers and missiles, space stations and broadcasting equipment. Its clients include AT&T, the David Sarnoff Research Center, W.L. Gore, Rochester Instrument Systems and Somfy Systems.
What makes Omega Circuits and Engineering special, however, is not just its business success, but its people. Ten of the 30 people on its staff are physically handicapped, and Genes is actively looking for more disabled employees. “I want to hire one or two people who are confined to wheelchairs, but can use their hands and eyes to do inspection work,” Genes says. “We already have some people who are legally blind, others who have epilepsy or diabetes, and still others who are here from prison as part of work-release programs.” One of Genes” most devoted employees is his driver, Steve Duzick, a dwarf, who has been with the company ten years. Omega Circuits and Engineering was recently named Employer of the Year for 1992, in view of its policy about hiring handicapped employees.
Genes” attitude toward hiring the handicapped comes from personal experience. He has an artificial leg. On Genes” business card is his motto above the company logo: “The Handicapped Designing and Building Toward the Future.”
Genes is cheerfully casual about his disability–he jokes that when he loses his temper, he takes his leg off and hurls it at offenders. But it was also the main reason he decided to go into business for himself, after working several years for other companies. “When you reach a certain age and are laid off from your job, don”t think people don”t look at your artificial leg–they do,” he says. “But printed circuit boards was a field I liked, and customers encouraged me to start making our own boards. I plunged into the business.” The orders came in slowly but surely, and the company grew enough in the first four years to allow it to move to a warehouse in New Brunswick, which his son helped turn into a manufacturing facility with its own water treatment plant.
The move also taught Genes a lesson about the lip service that is often paid the handicapped. He repeatedly requested a well-known public official from the town to inaugurate the new facility, but was ignored. Once an inauguration ceremony was scheduled, but the official failed to show up. Genes lost his temper and began shouting over the phone with the official. “He taught me some swear words I never knew,” Genes recalls. Efforts to get a break from the town on the water rate also failed. “No one gives you any assistance,” Genes says. “There is so much red tape, by the time any help comes, you are sunk. I don”t depend on the town or the government.”
Business, meanwhile, has been getting tougher and “competition is fierce,” Genes says. But the company is still slogging to get into newer generations of printed circuit boards, which are getting smaller and more intricate in keeping with changes in electronics. Omega Circuits and Engineering has invested in new equipment, which will allow it to produce more sophisticated boards, and is going after Defense Dept. work as part of the program for handicapped and minority-owned companies. “I would like to see our business triple in the next five years,” says Genes. He hopes that if Omega Circuits and Engineering gets approved as a military supplier, it will help him reach that goal. But even if he does not, he has no plans to give up. “I”m not looking for any handouts,” he says. “We are surviving on our own.” Succeeding as well, many would say. s
